The Barcelona New Year's Eve celebrations are attended by around 95,000 people and broadcast live to over 1 million others on Spanish television. The massive celebration spreads from the Montjuic mountains to the Espanya square in the city, with music and performance all along the Maria Cristina Avenue.
A full Roland setup included two M-5000 consoles, one for monitors and one at the heart of the system as the FOH console mixing down music - with the compact M-5000C console providing the television and PA systems feeds. The Roland S-4000S, S-2416 and S-0816 Digital Snake solutions took care of all the inputs and outputs for the stage, video feeds, mix minus buses, RF and in-ear microphones. Each of the 12 delay towers featured a Roland M-48 personal monitoring system creating a simple R.E.A.C to analogue output between all of the elements. The R.E.A.C infrastructure totalled approximately 2km of Cat 5e cable.
Commenting on the challenges that this event posed, Suárez explained, "The show was very complicated; over 40 people on the stage with live music, an opera singer, presenters, a lot of video going in and out. Flexibility is the key with these kind of shows and you need to rely on something that can cope with the live changes without problems. The M-5000 was the only option for us and it worked perfectly."
In the stage area the inputs provided by two Roland S-4000S-3208 Digital Snakes were used for inputs from the bands playing at the event. The inputs on the Roland S-2416 took care of all the RF mics and in-ear Microphones for the presenters and performers whilst the Roland S-0816 handled the video feeds and mix minus buses.
The M-5000 at monitor position simultaneously controlled three types of monitors- traditional wedge monitors, in ear monitors and the Roland M-48 personal monitoring systems at the delay towers. The two Solo Busses on the M-5000 allow one Solo Bus to be assigned to the wedges and one to the in ears.
(Jim Evans)
